With Lone Survivor, director Peter Berg reminds me a bit of Cartman in the Faith+1 episode of South Park. Cartman changes the object of all the love songs from “girl” to “Jesus” to form a Christian rock band. Berg is like that, only instead of Jesus it’s the military. Mr. Berg? It seems like you really love the military. No no, I mean it seems like you are actually in love with the military. Sir, what I mean to say is that it seems like you actually want to have sexual relations with the military. Sir, can you please stop fanning your penis with that flag?

But, as much as Berg’s obsession with warfighting seems unhealthy and child-like, he’s so willing to wear his heart on his sleeve that it’s hard not to appreciate him. Passion – and I mean passion for the story and the subject matter, not passion for accolades and awards – has a way of trumping other considerations, like balance, and restraint, and not depicting your protagonist kissing an Afghani baby set to a cover of a U2 song. It’s quite possible that he’s a jingoist psychopath, but he’s a jingoist psychopath who makes a hell of a movie.

I’m a third of the way into Dirty Wars, a book about how extralegal killings of those deemed enemies of the US without due process or congressional oversight has become official policy, which I would not necessarily recommend pairing with a hagiography of the Navy SEALs who help carry out many of those killings. So when Berg’s film opened with real footage of SEALs doing push ups in the surf and being drowned and generally exhibiting superhuman levels of DETERMINATION and GRIT set to soaring guitar music, I could practically hear Berg shouting “HOLY SHIT, BRO, AREN’T THESE MOTHERF*CKERS BADASS?!” in my ear. It was slightly disconcerting.

I was pleased to find that the movie that followed however, was mostly about human beings making tough choices to help other human beings. Sure, the helpful human beings were almost all Americans, and they sometimes died heroically on a mountain top at sunset while being shot with slow motion bullets as “We Can Be Heroes” played, but like Amy Adams says in Her, “falling in love is like this socially acceptable form of insanity.” In this case you just have to remember that Peter Berg is in love with America.

Lone Survivor‘s perspective is planted firmly with the SEALs (the book it’s based on having been written by gung-ho Texan SEAL Marcus Luttrell), and yeah, on the whole we probably didn’t need another movie showing US special forces soldiers wasting bad guys like it’s a video game. But judged on its own merits, Lone Survivor is a pretty great story. It’s about a four-man team of SEALs – Marky Mark as Luttrell, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, and Emile Hirsch – hunkered down in the mountains near an Afghan village where a head-chopping Taliban commander is busy applying eyeliner and making plans to drink the blood of children. While the SEALS wait for their opportunity to strike, some goat herders happen upon them, risking compromising their position. The situation presents them with a dilemma: kill the herders, and become murderers. Tie them up and leave them to possibly freeze to death before anyone finds them. Or let them go and risk getting killed when they blab to the Taliban. The SEAL team eventually lets the herders go, the fateful moment.

You can call Lone Survivor propagandist and not be totally wrong, but the fact that the most heroic act in the movie is one of compassion goes a long way (and as far as I know, actually happened). In real life, the US war effort didn’t always (or perhaps even often) prioritize avoiding a few civilian casualties above the success of the mission during the war on terror, so while this instance may not be a representative sample, it is easy cheer for. It’s aspirational, and Berg is clever enough to see the distinction. In a lot of ways, Peter Berg is the filmmaker Michael Bay would be if Bay was a tad smarter and better at his craft and less obsessed with titties. Basically, America is to Peter Berg what titties are to Michael Bay.

One of the goat herders turns out to be much faster than the SEALs expect, thanks to ROCK PARKOUR, and the Taliban is upon the SEALs faster than you can call a reporter a draft dodger. Hemmed in on all sides by Taliban fighters, the SEALs start jumping off cliffs. They take so much punishment that it borders on comical and fall down so many hills and for so long that it’s almost like the falling-down-the-hill scene in Hot Rod played for drama. It borders on unintentional comedy, but it’s also intense as hell. The theater was collectively exuding “oof” and “ouch” like we were watching a boxing match, and the slightly built gay man sitting next to me was literally cowering under a seat back. There were some silly lines (“tell ‘em I died with my brothers, with a full heart”), but let it never be said that Peter Berg can’t build and maintain tension. Visually, the only real flaw was that Emile Hirsch runs more like drama student than a Navy SEAL.

So yes, it’s a story about tough-guy SEALs wasting bad dudes and acting heroic as f*ck. No, it does not pass the Bechdel test. And for those of you hoping that Hollywood will stop depicting America as we like to see ourselves, I have an oil rich Nigerian uncle I’m collecting cashier’s checks for. It’s not going to happen. And as long as we’re still stroking ourselves off, you could do a lot worse than Lone Survivor. Lone Survivor is basically a more meatheaded version of Argo, a story of heroic Americans that’s somewhat one-sided and plays fast and loose with the truth at points and has a preposterous Hollywood ending that only an Amish hoarder would believe, but is pretty entertaining nonetheless. Berg even slaps a credits montage featuring pictures and video of the real men who died in the operation, which is cheap and cheating and a way to make his film above criticism, but totally works as a tear-jerking strategy (though I did make me wonder where the hell was that Asian guy for the entire movie?). You really believe Peter Berg made the movie for these people. There’s a sweetness to that gesture, even if it may have come from a place of unhealthy idolization. Impressionable youths probably won’t know the difference, but in fairness to Berg, he has gone to great pains to drive home the point that the movie is about soldiers and not war. Well, American soldiers, anyway.

Yeah, you would be wrong, Vince. And a smarmy dipshit better suited to The New Republic. But they probably rejected your articles on “Why Communism under Stalin is misunderstood by Running Dog Capitalists” as not being anti-American enough.

Haha, you think the Taliban was solely funded by the U.S. I guess you have never heard of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan? Oh the lies that libtards tell themselves. Don’t forget your tinfoil hat on your way back over to MSNBC!

This ought to be one of those movies i’d lap up; any story that plays on The Warriors/Xenophon katabasis story works for me. But I just can’t get over how – and fair enough, I’m only going off the trailer and that banner pic up there so am happy to be proved wrong – phoney the sense of place is. Look at the banner pic. Is that taken from a scene about a training exercise in The Rockies? Because if that’s Afghanistan… fuck me. They might as well be making their escape on a fucking log flume.

I can’t get over how glaringly half-assed this looks by not even resembling the Middle East. It’s odd because Peter Berg directed The Kingdom which had a superb sense of place. Plenty of that movie was shot in the US but there was never any diluting of suspension of disbelief. This just looks fake and cheap. Like your mom.

From everyone I know who’s been there, yeah, it looks absolutely nothing like Afghanistan. But I dunno, it’s probably pretty hard to shoot on location there. And a lot of the real guys had bit parts in the movie, as if to say “these guys are okay with how little it looks like Afghanistan, so just go with it.”

Watched this with my cousin, an ex-Ranger who was in Iraq (lots of “fun” stories). For others, Berg’s war boner (which probably has a bald eagle tattooed on it) is kind of enduring, but for guys like my cousin, it was just sickening to him. I’m pretty sure if anyone in the military actually said, “You can die for your country, I’m going to live for mine,” they’d get the shit slapped out of them. I enjoyed The Kingdom, because that was actually strikingly nuanced at how similar we are to the people we’re hunting. But it looks like none of that rubbed off on the director for this one. The visuals may have been great, but I just can’t get behind what it’s trying to do. Although I am enjoying responding to my friends saying “Are we leaving yet?” at the bars with “I don’t go home; you don’t go home!”

As an aside, Vince, I didn’t read Dirty Wars, but I did just watch the documentary on Netflix, which was outstanding.

Orientalism and Post-Colonialism philosophy in general is rather strange. You can’t depict anything of a different culture because, whether or not you’re commenting or observing, it creates and acknowledges a border that establishes an “us and them” dynamic. AND DATS RAYCESS!

I saw a preview of this before Wolf on Wall Street (a bizarre juxtaposition, for sure) & the preview was all about the actual soldier’s quest to get this story out to the world. It was so pro-‘Merica in just the preview that I have no real desire to see the movie itself.

And I took it as such, I thought it was a good one. I was trying to think if Zero Dark Thirty passes. There’s the one scene where the two women are having dinner before the attack on the hotel. I mean, most every conversation in that movie is about UBL so it’s not gonna pass no matter what.

It’s a point of conversation right now because people are doing yearly breakdowns on which movies pass and which don’t. The chart I saw looked like it was about 50/50 for movies released last year.

It’s just a test and it points out a particular issue and one that in certain movies can be addressed. It’s also not a mark of quality one way or another. Gravity and All is Lost fail because well, yeah.

But why should Ender’s Game and The Hobbit fail? Those are two movies packed with characters and especially in The Hobbit’s case, plenty of time to burn. They couldn’t have two female characters spend a single scene together talking about anything other than a man? That’s poor and thoughtless writing.

The odd thing about the Bechdel Test is that it shoots itself in the vajayjay with the limitations imposed by it’s own rules. Gravity, for example, doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test even though Sandra Bullock is the main character and she’s on-screen for 98% of the entire movie but she doesn’t have a conversation with another woman the entire time so…FAIL.

No, I go into it above, and even those who grade a movie with the Bechdel Test don’t see it as an end all about quality. There are good reasons why a movies like All is Lost or Gravity fail that particular test that are purely structural and necessary for the story the movie is trying to tell.

Where it shines a light that’s useful are on movies that fail it for no good reason like Ender’s Game, The Hobbit, Pacific Rim or Star Trek Into Darkness. It’s not the end all, be all and no one but it’s knee jerk critics claims that it is. The Dark Knight fails it and everyone knows that movie kicks ass but what the test does show is that there’s a certain lack of representation in that movie that should be brought up and worked on in the future.

I don’t watch war movies set in the present day, but I’m conflicted about this one. The story is pretty incredible, but I found the book to be one of the worst 1st person accounts of the military I’ve ever read. Regarding jingoism, civilian casualties, heroism, etc. I will say that it’s pretty much impossible to make a movie that effectively balances these considerations. It goes directly to how perceptions of war and humanitarianism have changed in the last 20 years or so. The USA was roundly criticized for not intervening in Rwanda, Darfur, and the Balkans. The USA was criticized first for not immediately dealing with the situations in Somalia, the Shiite uprising in Iraq after the Gulf War, Syria, and Libya. These criticisms were immediately followed up with anger at how the US went about dealing with these conflicts. Modern disapproval with realpolitik means that the international community routinely demands that humanitarian problems in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia be dealt with; but that almost always means US troops. Which ALWAYS means civilian casualties. The international community can’t abide this, so we’re left with a paradox. People demand action but can’t accept the consequences of it.

To balance “Dirty Wars” read “Shake Hands With the Devil” by Romeo Dallaire and look at how the Dutch military performed in the Balkans. [www.telegraph.co.uk] These are great examples of the conflict between international consensus on preventing human rights abuses, and an absolute refusal to accept the very dirty consequences of intervening.

One note, this is not an attempt to deflect criticism of the War on Terrorism. But the conflict between intervention and the repercussions of it go directly to the issues that framed the events surrounding Operation Redwing.

I guess to put it less ridiculously, my point is that it is impossible to balance a modern war movie, because modern politics and Western thinking have not found an equilibrium. My earlier post is about how that is a real problem. And part of that problem is that the international community demands intervention (and I believe, is required by various conventions and treaties to act).

I think being anti-interventionalist is a strange way to view a world that is as massively connected as the one we live in. Look at the way people view the isolationists (in Britain and, later, the US) who were tripping all over themselves to avoid getting involved in WWII. If you avoid a problem long enough, and you’re really lucky, all it does is shit in a bag, set it on fire and leave it on your doorstep. But Sept. 11 shows that you can’t pretend things aren’t happening out there because it’s politically convenient to sit on your hands.
The bigger issue, that most people don’t want to, or even know how to address, is the fact that the very high standard of living everyone in western Europe and North America enjoys is based, in great part, to the existence of the US military, and its defense of global markets for US, and allied, economic interests. It’s a shitty thing to have to acknowledge because doing so means we’re all culpable, to a greater or lesser degree, by our active participation in an economic system that demands exponential growth at the expense of others.
When you understand this, you can’t say “Fuck America.” without inadvertently damning yourself.

But Berg left out the BEST most ‘Murican part of the story; The Afghans that helped us were denied visas for entry to the US and were left behind to the tender mercies of a vengeful, pissed off taliban that then proceeded to kill them and their families. Yay broken promises!

They are actually still working on getting out of Afghanistan the Afghani villager who initially saved Lutrell. It’s taking way too long, but it’s still being worked on. And I think we should also mention that the movie makes a point of showing that Lutrell only survived because of the compassion of that villager and his family.

We had every right to hunt and kill Bin laden. The rest of it? Anyone looking at these wars sensibly knows or should have known they were clusterfuck from Day1, made worse by rules of engagement that put troops needlessly at risk.We have a 2nd to none miltary to defend America, not try to turn 15 centuries of tribal Islamic culture into New England meeting house democracy or some such crazy shit. Lutrell himself in his appearances has inched very close to questioning the whole venture.

I have read Luttrell’s book, along with a number of other books about the wars. Most notable was Dexter Filkins’ “The Forever Wars”. We have some great people in the military. Sadly that can not be said of anyone in any leadeship role in either party since at least Reagan(who quickly decamped from an ill-considered Beirut deployment after 242 marines were killed by a suicide bomber.). These brave men and women are being used as cannon fodder for nonsense. There is no plan It;’s a disgrace. God bless Lutrell and men and wmen like him whop so serve. And for God’s sake bring them all home already.

I remember when Emile Hirsch was suppose to be the next big thing, he made that kayaking movie (or something) with Sean Penn and it looked like he was gonna be big. Then he made Speed Racer, meh, and then he kinda disappeared. Made that weird awful looking space movie The Darkest Hour two years ago that didn’t help his stock at all.

The most heroic act of the movie? You mean when Medal of Honor winner Lt. Michael Murphy knowingly exposed himself to enemy gunfire so that he could get a satellite phone signal strong enough to try and secure a rescue operation for the men under his command? By all appearances, he knew he would not survive. But, if you believe what you read, selflessness and taking care of others was a hallmark of Murphy’s life, from childhood until the moment he died.

“The most heroic act of the movie? You mean when Medal of Honor winner Lt. Michael Murphy knowingly exposed himself to enemy gunfire so that he could get a satellite phone signal strong enough to try and secure a rescue operation for the men under his command?”

I don’t want to get into an argument over “most heroic,” but letting the goat herders go was also selfless, and it begat him having to expose himself to gunfire to save his buddies. They were similar acts of heroism.

In either respect, I see your point. However, I was responding to the fact that you wrote “the most heroic act of the movie.” Like you said, I think there were a lot of heroic acts in this film. I found Murphy and Muhammed Gulab to be the most heroic men in the story. Both placed themselves in grave danger because they chose to protect those more vulnerable than themselves.

I don’t consider myself jingoistic, and I certainly don’t think all soldiers are infallible. And don’t get me started on the higher ups that send these young men into harm’s way. But I guess I am guilty of taking most of what was written in the book at face value. In particular, the descriptions of the SEALS taking repeated, violent plunges off the side of a cliff stuck with me. The sense of “this is horrific but it’s our only way out” were very similar to people choosing to jump out of a burning building rather than be consumed by flames. So maybe I’m a little oversensitive, but I think the bottom line is that these four men fought for all they were worth against an overwhelmingly superior force. One of them survived, thanks in large part to the heroism of his commanding officer and of a stranger who owed him absolutely nothing, but who chose to save him anyway. So yes, it was largely a film that glorifies warriors and a lot of “American” themes. I think it also makes you think that there are not enough Michael Murphys and Muhammad Gulabs in this world.

This is more aimed at a lot of the comments rather than Vince and his review, but since when did a little blind patriotism become such a bad thing?

I’m a bleeding heart pussy liberal but even I can succumb to the pleasures of HOO-RAH! american war film. Sometimes it’s just fun to, without a shred of irony, truly buy into the “AMERICA FUCK YEAH” mindset for a few hours.

Yeah, I was gonna say that I can think of quite a few more nuanced american war films. And they’re good!

But to answer AL’s question, sometimes I just want to enter a world where there’s no doubt that we’re the good guys and the enemy is so evil that doing whatever it takes is reasonable. I don’t always want my war movies to make me feel like shit for enjoying the combat.

I suppose people don’t enjoy the blind patriotism in an action film as much because we’ve had been in large, complex wars for the past 10 years. When you set a movie in one of those war zones and then ignore all the more nuanced things that we’ve experienced from them, it seems really stupid at best and outright bigoted and disingenuous at worst.

I’m not a gung-ho Conservative with a huge war boner, but the Taliban is pretty fucking evil. They’re responsible for tons of human rights violations. They’re a religious fundamentalist group that has massacred thousands of Afghan citizens and is heavily involved in human trafficking and the sell of narcotics. I really didn’t shed any tears for them in the film when Marky Mark wasted them.

“Correction its the only type of war film Hollywood makes that makes money see “The Thin Red Line” “In the Valley of Elah” “Lions for Lambs” “Syriana” “Three Kings” “Stop Loss” “The Hurt Locker” “The Messenger” “Green Zone” “Home of the Brave””

I would heavily disagree with this point. First of all Thin Red Line made 100 million and more than doubled its budget, which for that movie is fucking amazing. But the rest of the movies I think are more recent wars, I think the issue on profitability tends more to hinge on the removal of the war from recent times. Same reason MASH was set in Korea despite being about Vietnam, it’s harder to sell people on war stories that are about wars we are still in.

For other examples of massively successful movies that didn’t glamorize war I would point toward Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, and Deer Hunter off the top of my head.

The Taliban is undoubtedly a bad force, but too often that’s taken as, “well they’re bad, so we must be good.” For instance, Dirty Wars, which Vince discussed earlier is a journalist uncovering a long list of American special forces killing civilians and then covering it up. So for instance, while the Taliban shot a girl in the face for wanting to go to school, America shot a girl because she existed in the wrong place

@irishda – in fairness, the Taliban shooting a girl trying to go to school is consistent with Taliban “state” policy where as the Gardez incident is a coverup because it is inconsistent with our policy.

Further, ironically the drone program that is, justifiably, controversial is in some respects the result of events like the one portrayed in the movie. Why risk highly trained, patriotic men when you can use a drone – zero risk to US personnel, high effectiveness? There are real issues of collateral damage and winning hearts and minds, but there is also an ethical obligation to preserve your own soldiers lives.

To add further complexity to this issue, drones, “smart bombs”, and special forces have greatly reduced civilian casualties. The most black and white, good vs. bad war we’ve ever fought was World War II and we absolutely leveled large parts of Europe and Asia and caused (in actual numbers and percentage-wise) far more civilian casualties. Some of these weapons, tactics, units, etc. were developed specifically to reduce collateral damage. But Western thinking on collateral damage has kept pace with the advances in weaponry. In WWII, the Allies could kill tens of thousands of civilians, even in occupied countries like France and still be welcomed as liberators. These days, the accidental death of even one civilian draws recrimination from Amnesty International.

I think it’s good that people’s feet are being held to the fire on this issue, otherwise it’s far too easy to end up with My Lai. But the laws of war do recognize that the unintentional killing of noncombatants is not necessarily criminal; it’s part of the nature of war.

There are lots of bad rulers of bad countries. The US military needs to stop being World Police because it’s a never-ending thankless errand. It’s tremdously sad that people live in shitholes ruled by lunatics, but it’s not our problem. We have learned nothing from Korea to Vietnam to the present day. Let them kill each other.

No one’s arguing for a nuanced view of the Taliban, they can all get clusterbomb executed one by one by Kim Jong-un for all I care. I’m just saying that us murdering Talibans and Osama (inarguably good things) is close to the only perspective we get on it from anything mainstream. So, no, I’m not looking for a Taliban perspective, nor am I saying Lone Survivor isn’t a great story in which I cheer for the US the whole time. But maybe show a Somali who isn’t yellow-eyed cannon fodder once in a while, or something like that.

I don’t disagree with you there (though of the ones you mentioned, I did like Syriana – especially when he tells the guy “we think you were chopping each other’s heads off when we got here and you’re going to be chopping each other’s heads off when we leave). And I will duly shit on those movies when asked to review them.

As for this one, the parts where Berg celebrates their courage are the strongest moments, and if it was just those I’d give it an A+. It’s the cheesiness of throwing in a weird U2 cover and kissing babies and making the Taliban bad guys look like B-movie bad guys instead of the real-life bad guys they are that makes me downgrade it. Celebrate their courage honestly, so you don’t come off like a creepy obsessed fanboy.

No one wants a pro-Taliban movie. But to always portray the situation as US badass heroes facing down evil Muslims AND not adding any more context to the story gets a little old and doesn’t really tell the whole truth. The Taliban aren’t movie villains, and most Afghanis are not Taliban.

Part of the reason I had such a big problem with Luttrell’s book was that he always seems intent on portraying muslims the word over as an ugly, hateful horde of aliens. Now, since his job was to engage and kill people, I can understand why he had that outlook. If the general American public has this outlook, it’s pretty unhealthy.

“I looked back over my shoulder to where we had come from, into the vacant field at Falluja’s northern edge. A group of marines were standing at the foot of a gigantic loudspeaker, the kind used at rock concerts.

It was AC/DC, the Australian heavy metal band, pouring out its unbridled sounds. I recognized the song immediately: “Hells Bells,” the band’s celebration of satanic power, had come to us on the battlefield.”

I am still on the fence over whether to see this in theaters or not. The marketing push and build up keep giving me the feeling that the movie storyline itself is as authentic as the fake book storyline in Tropic Thunder. Mostly meaning that it is just way too “hollywood” to be true to what actually happened. Please tell me I’m wrong for thinking this?

George W. Bush was too soft in his war on terror. He ran what should have been a Total War as a small proxy war and the American people are paying the price with those two countries not being the strong American allies they should be.

You don’t send in a tiny army with the goal of both overthrowing and stabilizing two separate countries. You put in the draft, send over an army made up of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and spend a s**t ton of money keeping them there while occupying the area and ensuring that a Pro-America government has legs to stand on.

The money and resources would come from both raising taxes, large deficits, and rationing. This destroys the economy, like it did for the British economy during and after WWII, but all Total Wars do. You can’t have a “good” economy while running a Total War. Nazi Germany tried to do that and we all saw the results of this strategy when Berlin was stormed by the Red Army. The only reason the US economy didn’t completely fall off a cliff after WWII is because relative to every country in Europe and Asia it didn’t spend that much and was one of the few places on the planet that wasn’t a smoking crater.

Both of these actions, drafting all eligible young men and raising taxes, would have been extremely unpopular and could have resulted in these wars never being accepted in the first place. So, he tried fighting his war and occupation half-assed and got half-assed results for his country in return.

And before you give me the gratuitous ‘fuck you if you don’t agree’ type reply, you don’t know me and what I’ve been through. I get cynicism & black humor; it is necessary. But you’ve never seen death, have you.

Dey Chopan District… 2004. Now Vince (and all of you shit nuggets decrying the military), you need to understand something that is outside of your realm. And God no I was not a SEAL team member… not tough enough.

Even if it is suppose to be a serious film. If it has Marky Mark in it, it is a comedy.
I steer clear of any movies that Marky Mark is in. The only reason I watched The Departed was because there was enough great actors to offset his terrible acting…Oh, and to also see Leonardo cry. (He cries in all of his movies.) And also, I wanted to see how well Scorsese plagiarized one of my favorite films “Internal Affairs” and won an oscar for. But that is a story for another time.
Did I mention that I do not like Marky Mark?

Well this wasn’t as sanctimonious and shitty as I expected this review to be. Honestly, Vince, you are so sad, tired, and predictable (especially in your political views) that you could have written this a year ago without seeing the movie.

Nothing wrong with being proud to be American, no matter what Howard Zinn kool aid drinking clowns like you say.

So if you were trying to be a smarmy mouthbreather from Gawker, you succeeded. Congrats, I guess.

I woke up this morning believing I had things pretty figured out. Then a person like Monroe comes along and pulls the rug right out from under me. Between the parroted talking points memorized from uncritically listening to dubious media personalities, the personal attacks that were totally unrelated to any possible facet of the conversation, and the blanket assertions or refutations presented without explanation…well, I guess I’m more than just a little embarrassed to have been so blind to the truth.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have a lot of serious chatroom research to do about Benghazi.

Just because he thought it was jingoistic doesn’t mean he’s pro Taliban or a pinko. You can be a proud American and think some war movies go wayyyy over the top. I saw a press screening of this a few weeks ago and it was an inspiring story in itself, but it doesn’t nearly address all the problems. And maybe it wasn’t trying to, but I think Vince was pretty spot on. But what do I know. I live in LA so I must be some sort of Hollyweird traitor.

I saw the film last night and thought it was pretty good because it was slightly nuanced, in so much that it illustrated Afghani does not equal Taliban, Muslim does not equal terrorist. That’s a big fucking step for you guys over the pond in general and Hollywood in particular. I’ll admit I groaned when the Seal training montage started, but later realised that was to give credence to their almost inhuman endurance. The shitty U2 cover was almost unforgivable though.

I too thought the terrain looked wrong, but a google image search shows that wherever they shot it, it was a dead ringer for some of the foothills in Afghanistan.